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Photoshop 7-more of a 6.5

I have also read a four page article in this months Computer Arts mag that i'm subscribed to and got through the post today that had a-lot of detail in.

In my opinion, this is more of a 6.5/carbonised version, and frankly a bit of an insult for the upgrade price of no doubt about UKú150. Not a-lot in there, and was expecting much more (however v6 is almost perfection, so I guess it's hard to beat!!).

So, the main features of interest are:

Healing brush-we will wait and see, but if it actually works, this could be a god send (just touched up/fixed/colour corrected/clip pathed 93 shoe shots for an ad agency...possible massive time saver!!)

Image browser-poor feature, and built into winxp/2000. Not too bad if it gives previews of EPS files though.

Spell checker-Never thought I'd see this one in Photoshop, but a welcome addition never the less!!

Brush Palette-Makes a welcome return in v7, with all kinds of brush dynamics settings, could be great!

Settings for tools-You can now save your own settings for each tool to build up sets for different types of tasks. This is a good idea I think.

Pattern maker filter-Whoop whoop, not amazing... a nice touch though it it's not too cheesy.

Enhanced 'new' dialogue, with default (and hopefully user configurable) image sizes for certain work. I already have templates for this, but it would be tidy to have it built in.

A few new web features, enhanced PDF production, and thats pretty much it. a bit thin on the ground really to justify a complete new version, but at the end of the day I will still buy it asap!! I do find it a little insulting though, and as the Computer Arts article said, it feels like more time was spend producing the OS10 native version than adding to the feature set. Also bad for the OS10 Mac comunity is the incompatability of OS9 Photoshop plug-ins... reported not to work unless you run the app under OS9. There is an issue with OS10 apps using OS9 code. Kinda defeats the object of carbonising it if you use plug-ins a-lot I think you will agree!! This is an issue with the plug-in vendors though, and will be sorted in due time (and with probably more expense for Mac users).

I expected to see some kind of 'filter palette', that would be kinda filter layer effects like gausian blur and other simple ones. Also improved vector handling tools would have been nice. There are so many cool things they could have put in, instead of this .5 of an effort.

Yes, an imporved painting 'engine' is a welcome addition, but I doubt very much that it will touch Painters capabilities... kinda in-between the two I would have thought! I have seen a screenshot of the brush palette, and it looks fairly subsantial! I know that one feature (reported in Computer Arts) that you can define different colours, so that when you use a brush, the colour varies as you paint, to give a more 'natural' feel rather than a solid colour. It is also a welcome addition being able to easily alter the brish dynamics (size, softness etc) easily within the brush palette. This seems to be one of the best improvements over v6.

Humph, I think there are a few things that will help me in graphics production...but still expected ALOT more for the upgrade price... especially as I am not a Mac user waiting for the OS10 native version (well, not at home anyway, have to use the cursed machines at work though!)

Sure Gavin, 'Carbonising' is a term that has been coined by the Mac community. It relates to applications being re-written to run under Mac OS 10, as this new(ish) operating system is completely different from previous versions of Mac OS, and is centered around a Linux core I believe. As it is basically a completely different operating system, software has to be completely re-developed to be 'carbonised', or in otherwords native to Mac OS 10.